21 Feb
2006
21 Feb
'06
10:51 a.m.
Lee Revell <rlrevell(a)joe-job.com> writes:
On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 23:15 -0500, Pete Bessman
wrote:
There is one thing you have to be aware of: if freedom to modify and
redistribute and edit do not factor in the assessment of "best", then
of course preexisting applications will win over stuff that still has
to be written and completed.
And with regard of design and coherence and originality, a team of 5
full-time programmers is different from 50 part-time programmers.
The "Open Source" mantra that public development is tantamount with
technically superior software is putting the cart before the horse.
Software does not just fall off the trees. Free software gives you
the opportunity to shape the state of the software you are working
with. It puts the power into your own hand. Whether you are in a
position to usefully wield it is a different question.
Pete complains that maybe he has listened too much to Stallman. I am
afraid if he did, he did not understand too much. Stallman is not a
person who promises superior quality of free software: that would be
the panacea of the "Open Software" camp. Stallman says that he
refuses to use non-free software for ethical reasons.
He does not preach that the grass is greener on his side. He just
refuses to be fenced in on the other side, regardless of the color of
grass.
Fighting to get free software to do the job, sharing one's
experiences, communicating with the developers all takes the state of
free software forward. This progress remains for others to continue
with even if at one point of time you run out of steam.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
For the kind of stuff I'm interested in (see
my above band
references to get an idea), I think it is eminently clear that
Linux isn't good enough. Maybe it is just me, but I have been
struggling intensely for some time to get things to work out, and
it just ain't happening. If anybody here has got some tracks that
can prove me wrong, I'd love to hear 'em. And maybe I'll get back
to Windows world and have the same problems --- but I sincerely
doubt it.
I think these gaps will be filled in rapidly as Linux systems with
good RT performance get more widely deployed. Once we get to the
point where you can boot the latest LiveCD from any distro and get
better latency OOTB than OSX or Windows, developers will not be able
to resist.
We are still not there yet but getting very close (months, not
years).